The largest U.S. arts and crafts chain had expressed worries that it was facing tough comparisons to Christmas 2013 when it scored big with Rainbow Loom rubber band craft kits. At the time, it was an exclusive product to Michaels stores.

The Irving-based retailer posted a profit of $157 million, or 75 cents a share, in the quarter ended Jan. 31, compared with a profit of $133 million, or 74 cents a share a year ago.

Interest expense declined to $39 million from $61 million in the fourth quarter of 2013 after it refinanced some debt and paid down $439 million in debt from its second quarter initial public offering proceeds. An additional $180 million in debt was paid in December.

The company forecast a full-year sales increase in the range of 3.2 percent to 3.7 percent. It expects profits to be in the range of $1.65 a share to $1.71 a share. Those results are based on 30 new or relocated stores.

Michaels ended the year with 1,168 Michaels stores in the U.S. and Canada and 120 Aaron Brothers stores.

“The strong cash flow generation of our business will allow us to continue to make the necessary investments to solidify and advance our market leadership, which we believe will lead to greater efficiencies and further improve profitability,” said chief executive officer Chuck Rubin. “We feel good about our strategies and the customer response they have driven.”

Costco has joined Kroger and Wal-Mart in their efforts to get the Texas Legislature to change the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code that prohibits public companies from selling liquor in the state.

The warehouse club’s executive vice president Dennis Zook said in a statement that the laws “artificially restrict competition and prevent us from directly serving our 1.3 million Texas members.”

Costco has 25 stores in Texas and 7,000 employees.

The retailers have formed a group that calls itself Texans for Consumer Freedom.

Texas is the only state in the nation that allows private companies to own package liquor stores while prohibiting publicly traded companies from doing so, said Travis Thomas, a spokesman for the retailers.

There are some states that prohibit both public and private companies from owning liquor stores. (In those instances, the state actually owns and operates them.)

Two bills have been introduced in the Texas Legislature to change the law.

Senate Bill 609 has been assigned to the Senate Business and Commerce Committee and HB 1225 is in the House Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee.

Hearings may be scheduled in a couple of weeks. The group is soliciting other retailers to join them.

TigerDirect is closing four Texas stores in Dallas, Euless, El Paso and McAllen by June. (Up in Minnesota at Best Buy’s headquarters they must be singing Queens’ “Another one bites the dust.”)

TigerDirect’s parent company Florida-based Systemax said it’s substantially exiting the brick-and-mortar retail business by closing 31 of its 34 stores.

Systemax said it will continue to reach consumers online at TigerDirect.com and is trying to build its business customer base.

TigerDirect purchased several stores from CompUSA when the Dallas-based chain went out of business in 2008. A reader corrected me that the TigerDirect that’s closing on the Dallas North Tollway was an Ultimate Electronics store, yet another chain that’s long gone. The Euless store is at 2800 Highway 121.

These stores are about 20,000 to 25,000 square feet, said CBRE senior vice president Jeff Kittleson. “They’re good locations in strong retail nodes.”

J.C. Penney is mailing a home catalog to customers this week. If you are among the targeted group of customers, you should have it by Thursday.

The 120-page book is an expanded direct marketing piece. The company dismantled its catalog operation in 2010. It discovered those Big Books, which were considered outdated versus online shopping, still inspired many customers to shop.

Penney is trying to use the book to regain 10 million customers who stopped buying bedding and bath merchandise from Penney when the 1,000-page, three times a year Big Book was discontinued five years ago. Last month, CEO Mike Ullman said during a conference call to report year-end results, that the catalog will do a better job of displaying bedding, for example.

Penney is trying to rebuild its home department which took a beating during the failed attempt to transform the department store by Ron Johnson when he was Penney CEO from November 2011 to April 2013.

Home was historically was about 20 percent of stores sales and more than half of Penney’s online sales. Penney’s home sales fell to about 10 percent in 2013.

The catalog is going out the same week that senior vice president of marketing Deb Berman resigned from the company.

She joined Plano-based Penney in August 2013 from Kraft Foods Group where she was vice president of marketing strategy and engagement.

Penney said in a statement Tuesday that Berman’s departure was her decision. “J.C. Penney is grateful for her service, and we wish her well in all future endeavors,” the company said.
Berman was part of CEO Mike Ullman’s rebuilding team after the company lost a lot of high level talent during former CEO Ron Johnson’s attempt to remake the department store in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

When Berman was hired, the chief marketing officer job at Penney had been vacant for 14 months. Johnson took over marketing at the chain and hired consultants to help him after Penney president Michael Francis was fired in mid 2012.

Before joining Kraft in 2009, Berman worked for ad agencies including DDB and Y&R. Penney was her first job running a retail company’s marketing program.

During her time at Penney, Berman led the chain back to its message of being a store for middle-income families.

Penney returned to weekly couponing and developed a new loyalty program tied to its store credit card. During the last two Christmas holiday seasons, the store’s “jingle more bells” campaign engaged customers to share their giving experiences. Marketing also created several tie-ins with Disney’s Cinderella movie.

Separately, a larger group of stores will be auctioned later this month.

The U.S. bankruptcy court approved bidding procedures this week. Bids are due by March 17 at 5 p.m. ET

The auction will take place on March 23 at noon ET in the Jones Day office in New York. The law firm represents RadioShack in its bankruptcy. The Fort Worth-based consumer electronics retailer filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 5.

The sale hearing is March 26, at 9:30 a.m. ET in U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware.

Swedish fast-fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz said Thursday it plans to open a 23,000-square-foot store at the Golden Triangle Mall in Denton.

The store is expected to open this fall. It will be located near the southwest entrance of the mall between Sears and J.C.Penney. “The mall’s redevelopment has created new impressive entrances and facades, a new interior, new center court, new performance area and many other enhancements,” H&M said.

GameStop, the store that’s turned your old gaming stuff and more recently your old phones and tablets into currency, is now accepting gift cards from other retailers in exchange for purchases in its stores.

Grapevine-based GameStop said Wednesday that it’s expanding an online program it started last year with Cardpool to its more than 4,000 U.S. stores.

The instant gratification of a store exchange is “a logical next step,” said Jon Haes, senior director of pre-owned merchandise at GameStop.

Gift cards from more than 100 retailers and restaurants, including Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Applebee’s, Cheesecake Factory and Starbucks, are eligible.

Basically, cards from other stores are loaded onto a GameStop gift card. GameStop is buying those cards back through Cardpool at a discount. (I’m trying to find out if other retailers do this in their stores. I haven’t heard back from Cardpool, yet.)

On Cardpool’s website it says customers can sell gift cards to them for up to 92 percent cash back. So a $10 Wal-Mart gift card, for example, would be accepted for as much as $9.20.

Cardpool is a gift card exchange program that’s owned by Blackhawk Network Holding. Blackhawk was recently spun off from Safeway and is the company responsible for all those gift card displays that started popping up in grocery stores and other retailers several years ago.

The company, formerly known as Garden Ridge, said it will increase part-time wages to $9 an hour beginning May 3, the start of its second quarter. Also, all full-time employees will earn at least $10 per hour starting in May.

About 1,800 of At Home’s 2,100 employees will be getting raises. The home décor superstore has 83 stores and plans to grow to 200 by the end of the decade. Lee Bird was named CEO in Dec. 2012 and he’s been making changes in employee benefits and the corporate culture that included not being open on Thanksgiving last year.

“Attracting and retaining great team members has and continues to be a key priority for us,” Bird said. “We recognize that our success as a company to date and going forward is strongly tied to our talented team and their ability to deliver a great customer experience within our stores.”

Bird said it’s the company’s mission to become an employer of choice.

Other retailers have followed Wal-Mart’s Feb. 19 announcement that it would increase hourly pay to $9 an hour in April for about 500,000 of its employees. That raise is followed by an increase to at least $10 an hour next year on Feb. 1.

TJX, operator of the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls discount chains, raised its minimum wage the week after Wal-Mart made its announcement. The company also operates HomeGoods and Sierra Trading Post chains.

Gap raised its minimum wage to $9 last summer and said that will go up to $10 in June 2015. Some retailers already had a minimum wage of more than $9 a hour before Wal-Mart’s announcement including The Container Store. Whole Foods Market’s starting wage is $10 an hour and it’s $11.50 an hour at Costco.